


i long to hear your voice

by benjanninsolo



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Basically 2300 words of Emma Swan being sad and I'm sorry, Character Study, F/M, I have no idea where this came from, Internal Monologue, but Emma Swan deserves nothing but happiness 2k17, post-ep fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 12:49:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10465413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benjanninsolo/pseuds/benjanninsolo
Summary: Post 6x14. Emma tries to understand what it means to have the house all to herself--and what it means to find herself at the beginning again.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this came from, but I do know that it is my dear friend Paula's fault. Enjoy roughly 2,300 words of Emma Swan sadness. Someone please give her a hug.
> 
> Title from "Moondust" by Jaymes Young.

Emma doesn't know how long she's standing there, forehead pressed against the cool glass of the window pane and fingers inching slowly away from the light switch, but she snaps back to reality the moment her fingertips brush over the cool metal of the lock on the door. She blinks and huffs a little, her breath a soft white cloud against the cold of the glass, and then turns her attention toward locking the door.  
  
With the door locked, she turns her back, feeling her body ache as her defenses start to go up again. Walls begin to erect themselves where they once stood before, but they're worn down, ramshackle and pierced and penetrable.  
  
She passes the coat-rack and lingers a little while too long as she glances at the red leather jacket hanging there. It almost seems to mock her, its vibrant colors and strength out of place against the soft hues of her blouse, the heavy weight pressing down upon her shoulders. She makes a note to put it in the coat closet in the morning. Out of sight, out of mind.  
  
At least, if she keeps telling herself that, maybe she'll believe it.  
  
She lingers again near the doorway to the living room, taking in the sight of the couch with a brief wince as she recalls eager kisses and healing touches, warm nights curled up with popcorn and Milk Duds. Her gut clenches, as though she's been lanced through with a sword. Her mind's eye flickers back to the night she'd run him through with Excalibur. She thinks, for the briefest of moments, that she knows his pain—that maybe, just maybe, her pain in this moment is even worse.  
  
She doesn't stop to look at anything else as she plods up the stairs, steps heavy and joints aching, eyes burning and nose red—from the cold, she tells herself. That's all this is.  
  
She doesn’t stop off at the bathroom like she usually does before heading to bed. She couldn’t bear to see herself right now, the sullen eyes that would stare back at her in the mirror. She doesn’t need to see it to believe it, the voice in the back of her head scolding her for being foolish enough to think that she could have this—love, true love. Happiness.  
  
Saviors are responsible for everyone else’s happy endings. They don’t get to have their own.  
  
She had thought, so many times in the past few weeks, that she could tempt fate—that she could defy it, as long as she had her family at her back and Killian at her side. And for a while there, it had seemed like she would be able to. She had chosen her fate, had fought for her happiness, had faced Gideon down and lived to tell the tale. She’d had her father’s courage, her mother’s wisdom, Henry’s unwavering hope and faith, and Killian’s love, tried and true and real.  
  
Tried and true and real, it seemed—until now.  
  
The bile begins to rise at the back of her throat and she has to stop walking to catch herself against the doorframe of the bedroom— _their_ bedroom. She remembers that night she nearly collapsed to the floor in Gold’s shop, Killian’s arms strong around her and as reassuring as ever. She has to be the one to hold herself now, to gather herself up and tell herself she can do this, she can get through this, all on her own.  
  
She lingers in the doorway and lets the nausea pass, vision blurring a few times over in the meanwhile. She’s better than this, stronger than this. People have come in and out of her life so many times over the years. She’s supposed to be used to this.  
  
People have come in and out of her life so many times over the years. But no one has ever gotten as close.  
  
With a shuddering breath, she steps forward and finally crosses the threshold into the bedroom. She doesn’t bother to turn the light on, doesn’t stop to strip the chilled clothes from her body and replace them with the warmth of her favorite winter pajamas. Instead, she walks straight to the bed, facing it head on and staring it down with shoulders squared in a show of strength she doesn’t currently feel.  
  
The sheets are still mussed from the night before, twisted and twined together in so signature an intimate way. Her pillow is tucked just beneath his. Her copy of _Dubliners_ sits in its spot on the bedside table, pages dog-eared with rereading, and her sheriff’s badge sits atop the cover. On Killian’s table sit a few rings and chains, pieces of jewelry he’d forgotten to put on that morning. She’d been confused earlier when she’d seen them there, but now, given what she knows his mental state to have been, it makes all the sense in the world.  
  
The sword sheathed through her gut twists tighter. The signs of his former presence merely reaffirm his absence.  
  
But beneath that pain, that slow-swelling anger and sorrow, blossoms hope. He’s left some things behind. Could that mean—  
  
No. She shuts down that line of thought before it can get too far. Hope is her mother’s game, her father’s joy, her son’s world. Hope has brought her nothing but misery.  
  
Slowly, she walks around to her side of the bed and lowers herself onto it. She feels wearied well beyond her years. She takes her time removing her boots, one after the other, and then gently nudges them aside, tucked under the table. She runs her hands over her face, breathing shallow and a small sound of distress slipping free before she can help it. But she pushes that back, too. She doesn’t have the time to feel. Walls up.  
  
She reaches around and lets her hair free from the braid she’d so intricately plaited that morning. She thinks about that morning, when she’d sung in the shower and smiled at her rosy reflection in the mirror and kissed Killian so sweetly, so soundly over their morning coffee that her whole body had been buzzing with such joy, such hope that she’d never known it possible to feel.  
  
As the hair ties loosen and fall into her palms, she feels the walls she’s tried to rebuild begin to strengthen. Her hair fans around her shoulders, concealing her face for a few moments, and just as readily as her walls go up, she feels them crumble all over again. In the privacy of a bedroom that isn’t merely her own, with her head ducked and her hair acting as a shield, she allows herself to feel, her face to reflect every last bit of pain and betrayal she feels.  
  
How could he just…leave? After everything they’ve been through, after forgotten memories and frozen kisses, after dark curses and the literal depths of hell, how was _this_ their breaking point? Why had he hidden himself from her? Why hadn’t he let her in? Why would he not give her the chance to understand?  
  
Why wouldn’t he let himself be happy? Why wouldn’t they let themselves be happy?  
  
She could feel herself beginning to spiral, wheels spinning and breath catching and mind racing, and she knew if she didn’t stop soon, the spiraling would give way to sobbing. She wasn’t ready for that part of it just yet. And so, yet again, she manages to force herself to stop feeling, to push everything back behind the walls that were well on their way to bursting.  
  
She sits up straighter on the edge of the bed, sweeps her hair back over her shoulders and out of her face, and resolves to move on from this. At least for tonight, she wouldn’t allow herself the luxury of pain.  
  
Within a few seconds, she shifts and lays back underneath the covers, tucking herself away and making herself feel small enough that the weight of this all could very well crush her if she let it. But she won’t.  
  
She reclines against the pillows and stares silently up at the ceiling for a few long moments, but the longer she stares at the blank cream paint cast shades darker with the lights off and the moonlight streaking in through the curtains, she begins to recall nights on the Jolly Roger, when they would sit nestled together over mugs of hot rum and Killian would point out Polaris, Cassiopeia, Andromeda. He would weave his fingers into the softness of her hair and whisper sweet tales into her ear, dropping doting kisses to her forehead, her cheeks, and he would always give the tale of Cygnus particularly loving attention. She never failed to swoon each and every time.  
  
Her eyes burn now as though she were staring each and every one of those stars down. And she would, she would stare down each and every one of them if it meant things could be easier for the both of them.  
  
If it meant he could be here with her now, she would defy each and every star in this galaxy and the next.  
  
She shuts her eyes against the burn, breathes in deep and slow through her nose, and reminds herself that she can do this. She isn’t alone, not really, not with her parents a few streets away. Not with Henry, spending the night at his grandparents’ but usually just down the hall. Not with her friends, even if it’s grown harder and harder to keep in touch with them, what with Ruby and Elsa realms away now. Her chest constricts at the thought that she doesn’t even know where Killian is, what realm he’s in. Can his distance even be measured in miles? She gasps for breath and tells herself to stop—the leitmotif for the evening, it seems.  
  
This time, she rolls over onto her side, curling up and squeezing her eyes shut ever tighter until she all but has to open them, if only to ease the sting now added by her insistent pressure. But as soon as her eyes open, she’s greeted with nothing, emptiness, absence.  
  
The bed suddenly feels too large for her. And she can’t help but feel ungrateful, with no small amount of irony, as she realizes just how much her younger self would have longed for a bed like this: large and soft and warm, and all hers. Hers and hers alone. But now, it feels wrong, twisted and distorted and cruel much like the Wish Realm had been. In the middle of this cold and snowy night, his absence is so loud it practically screams.  
  
She stares at his side of the mattress, silent and unmoving, and then, slow but sure, she stretches one hand across and lets her fingertips glide over the cold of the sheets. He always runs hot beside her, the perfect match to the way in which she finds herself always freezing even through her many layers—the byproduct of years of living on the street and in shabby group homes, she’d always figured. But now, the sheets are as cold as ice, much like the glass of the window she’d been pressing her forehead against mere minutes before.  
  
The mattress is sunken in a little beneath her fingertips, the comforting weight of his body having long since left its mark, and she traces a pathway along the sloping curve a few times over, swearing that she can still feel his heat embedded within. She’s done this same sort of move many a time, running her fingertips along the curve of his back and the warm skin of his chest, tracing the scars that linger there with an almost worshipful, loving attention. But in this moment, she is the one who is scarred— _scarring_ —and not a single one of hers can ever be seen. No one will touch or kiss her scars. No one will convince her that everything will be all right.  
  
When she sees her parents for breakfast in the morning, she knows exactly what they will say. That love, true love, will survive every test that comes its way. That she and Killian have been through so much already that there’s no reason that they can’t fix whatever it is that has been broken between them this time around. That no matter what happens, they will always find each other.  
  
In the light of day, maybe those sweet platitudes will hold more meaning, more comfort.  
  
But now, in the dark of night, with snow steadily falling and blanketing all of Storybrooke in its unforgiving cold, she reaches for his pillow, pulls it close, and shuts herself off from it all. She presses her face into the soft silk of his pillowcase, scents of the sea and rum and warm musk long-seeped into the fabric, and the ache in her chest grows anew, carves its way into her very being.  
  
She looks at her left hand for a few long moments, at how stark and naked it looks without the ring even after only having worn it for a day, and she quickly balls her hand into a fist that she shoves beneath the pillow without so much as another thought.  
  
Her eyelids grow heavier and achier by the moment, and no matter how much she wants to stay up, to keep thinking, to process this in whatever way she can, she slowly begins to allow herself to be won over by the siren’s song of slumber.  
  
Tomorrow, she will figure out what to do next.  
  
Tomorrow, she will learn how to begin again.


End file.
